PHANTASMA.
Omne tulit punctum—­

INGENIOSO.  Mark you, Amoretto, Sir Raderic’s son, to him shall thy piping poetry and sugar-ends of verses be directed:  he is one that will draw out his pocket-glass thrice in a walk; one that dreams in a night of nothing but musk and civet, and talks of nothing all day long but his hawk, his hound, and his mistress; one that more admires the good wrinkle of a boot, the curious crinkling of a silk-stocking, than all the wit in the world; one that loves no scholar but him whose tired ears can endure half a day together his fly-blown sonnets of his mistress, and her loving, pretty creatures, her monkey and her puppy.[104] It shall be thy task, Phantasma, to cut this gull’s throat with fair terms; and, if he hold fast for all thy juggling rhetoric, fall at defiance with him and the poking-stick he wears.

PHANTASMA.
Simul extulit ensem.

INGENIOSO. 
Come, brave imps,[105] gather up your spirits, and let us march on, like
adventurous knights, and discharge a hundred poetical spirits upon them.

PHANTASMA.
Est deus in nobis:  agitante calescimus illo.

[Exeunt.

ACTUS III., SCAENA 5.

Enter PHILOMUSUS, STUDIOSO.

STUDIOSO.  Well, Philomusus, we never ’scaped so fair a scouring:  why, yonder are pursuivants out for the French doctor, and a lodging bespoken for him and his man in Newgate.  It was a terrible fear that made us cast our hair.

PHILOMUSUS. 
And canst thou sport at our calamities,
And count’st us happy to ’scape prisonment? 
Why, the wide world, that blesseth some with weal,[106]
Is to our chained thoughts a darksome jail.

STUDIOSO. 
Nay, prythee, friend, these wonted terms forego;
He doubles grief, that comments on a woe.

PHILOMUSUS. 
Why do fond men term it impiety
To send a wearisome, sad, grudging ghost
Unto his home, his long-long, lasting home? 
Or let them make our life less grievous be,
Or suffer us to end our misery.

STUDIOSO. 
O no; the sentinel his watch must keep,
Until his lord do licence him to sleep.

PHILOMUSUS. 
It’s time to sleep within our hollow graves,
And rest us in the darksome womb of earth: 
Dead things are grav’d, our[107] bodies are no less
Pin’d and forlorn, like ghostly carcases.

STUDIOSO. 
Not long this tap of loathed life can run;
Soon cometh death, and then our woe is done: 
Meantime, good Philomusus, be content;
Let’s spend our days in hopeful merriment.

PHILOMUSUS. 
Curs’d be our thoughts, whene’er they dream of hope,
Bann’d be those haps, that henceforth flatter us,
When mischief dogs us still and still for ay,
From our first birth until our burying day: 
In our first gamesome age, our doting sires